


Got to Let It Show

by Mosca



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Coming Out, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 19:02:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kris comes out of the closet; Adam holds the door open.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Got to Let It Show

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to mandysbitch for beta reading and to thistle90 for audiencing. Written for condancer for aiholidaybash '09, for the prompt "Standard AI/post-AI fic, Kris coming out and following his passion, Adam being awesome throughout the whole process." Title is from "I'm Coming Out" by Diana Ross. Of course.
> 
> I originally posted this story anonymously to the aiholidaybash community in December 2009 and to my own Livejournal in january 2010.

1.

Adam is watching Kris have Dr. Pepper and a bag of microwave popcorn for lunch. He could have anything, and this is what he chooses? He's lying on Adam's couch with his shoes on, crashing for a couple of hours between interviews and a mixing session. He's leaving crumbs.

Adam is everyone's future Jewish aunt. He's swiveling in his computer chair because there's no room on the couch, searching the internet for _New Moon_ set photos. Staring at a hole in the toe of Kris's gray sweat sock while he waits for TMZ.com to load.

Kris is shorter than the couch. He stuffs popcorn in his mouth to make himself harder to understand when he asks, "What do you think about me coming out?"

Adam swivels aggressively. "As what? Short?"

Kris throws the popcorn Adam deserves to be hit with. "Bisexual." His accent stretches the word into a funny shape. _Byyyye-sekshle._

"Why would you do that?"

Kris shrugs.

2.

Kris has to make decisions. Print, internet, TV? Which magazine or show or website? Now or after the album comes out? He and his music could come out together. Warn the interviewer or surprise her? Lead up to it, or a casual mention? Ask his manager? Ask Adam? Ask God?

Tell Katy. No two ways about that.

Or curl up back in his cocoon closet where the wedding ring means he's straight. It's no option at all.

He sticks his ring in his jeans pocket and wiggles his ambiguous left hand.

3.

Adam doesn't believe in bisexuality. It's a nice idea, but it's kind of like communism. Against human nature; only works in theory. Finally someone knocks down a wall and says, _It was fun, but I think I'm straight after all._

It's a fact of the universe that Kris loves Katy. Whatever Kris thinks he is, thinks he wants, he married a girl, made his choice. He doesn't get to double back now and join the other team, ring still shining on his finger.

Adam steps back from himself, listens to his own thoughts. When people said this stuff to him while he was coming out, he hid in his room and cried. Adam never thought he'd be the one to hold someone's closet door shut. 

The facts of the universe don't matter. Kris will keep on feeling what he feels.

4.

The first thing Kris's manager asks is if he's getting a divorce. The second thing is, how much does this have to do with Adam. The third thing is, can it wait until after the album release, because this has really stellar potential for messing up Kris's entire life and Kris deserves to see his name on the Billboard charts before that happens.

"After both albums. I don't want to go stealing anyone's thunder."

"Well, after that, we're getting into Christmas." Kris's manager sucks her teeth. There's something she's trying to get Kris to do. If he knew how to be famous right, he'd be able to tell what she wants.

5.

Kris moves to L.A. He needs to, to have a career, and Adam likes having him around, but it doesn't sit right. On tour, Kris used to talk about home, about missing his friends in Conway, the smallness and slow pace, the seasons. Now, home is a condo that 19 Entertainment picked out, furnished like a hotel room. No, now home is Adam's living room.

Adam doesn't ask:

  * What are you running away from?
  * Is it still okay for you to hang all over me like that, now that it might mean something?
  * How the heck is Katy?
  * Don't you have a condo somewhere that is nicer than my apartment?
  * Did I hallucinate you coming out to me?
  * No, seriously, what are you running away from?



Adam ends up with nothing to say.

6.

Kris's album comes out next week, and there are a lot of photoshoots. He does thirty-seven interviews in one day. Towards the end, he loses it a little and starts rambling about bears. He thinks the journalists can tell there's something going on with him, but they ask him the usual softball questions. 

He thinks he has learned how to lie, and then he watches himself on TV. The corner of his mouth turns up when he's fibbing. 

He hates the way he sounds when he talks in L.A. He didn't know he had an accent until he came here. People tell him it's cute or sexy, but all he hears is that it's _there_ , like the weird things he apparently does with his face when he sings, like his habit of wearing the same shirt to every public appearance (whatever, it's a good shirt). If his management team succeeds in smoothing all his rough edges, he's afraid he'll just be dull.

Maybe he's coming out just to make things interesting.

7.

Adam breaks up with Drake three days before his single is released. Or Drake breaks up with him. It's not really clear except that he doesn't have a boyfriend anymore. He copes by texting dick jokes to Kris. He's not actually that upset.

He's upset when his phone goes quiet for three hours and he tells himself Kris is asleep or doing an interview but can't shake the feeling he's hurt Kris somehow. He misses Kris after three hours. Kris should get a restraining order.

"Stop making me think about penises," Kris texts, and he adds about five exclamation points to make it look like a joke but Adam can tell that what he means is, stop making me think about _yours._

8.

Kris's manager recommends the Wanda Sykes Show. She's out, it's on Fox, she'll want the publicity, Kris will want to get it over with, and it's late at night so Kris can get a good night's sleep in between his announcement and all hell breaking loose.

His manager keeps referring to coming out as "your announcement." Kris thinks his sexuality should have a more colorful secret code name. He decides to call it Harvey. Harvey has to stay in his closet until after the album release. He's going on the Wanda Sykes Show with Harvey as his date. He hopes Katy and Harvey can learn to get along.

Kris isn't sure about that last one. Mostly when Adam texts him about his penis. Harvey is only human.

9.

Kris's album kind of tanks. Not horribly - everyone will go home with a profit - but it doesn't burn up the charts, doesn't get good reviews. Doesn't _do_ anything. It is self-effacing, like Kris.

Adam panics a little and acts like an asshole at the AMAs. Any attention is good attention, right? There is crotch thrusting and stunt kissing. The sound system is fucked up, and he misses a bunch of notes. He hears the playback: he sounds like a yard full of angry squirrels. Squirrels dressed in leather.

He's all anyone is talking about three days before Black Friday, and he's still only #3 on the Billboard chart. It's still a hit, a bigger hit than Kris's, and the deluge of angry letters will give him just the right kind of pop star notoriety. He got what he wanted. 

10.

Adam calls to say he wants a cheeseburger and a new pair of shoes. "Shouldn't you be calling your stylist and not me?" Kris says.

"And cocaine. Some cocaine would be fantastic." He says _fanTAStic_ like it's spinning around on a mirror ball.

"No cocaine," Kris says. "Drugs are bad."

"Drugs are _good._ " 

Kris is just about to figure out what's actually eating at him when Katy yells up the stairs to ask who he's talking to. She sighs loudly when she hears it's Adam again. "Okay, fine, I'm getting off," he yells. Adam snickers and starts making jokes about getting off.

Kris hangs up and goes to the living room to kiss his wife. She's stiff and cold in his arms. _I'm coming out on the Wanda Sykes Show in three days,_ he almost brings himself to mention.

11.

Adam watches Kris come out on national TV. A talk show takes balls, more than Adam has. _Rolling Stone_ always kept the possibility of retraction, withholding, rephrasing if he messed it up. Doing photo shoots with girls to ease the blow. Kris is alone on a couch with the truth, and nobody expects to hear it. Not like they did with Adam, when they already knew. There's a hush in the studio audience and then furious, exuberant applause.

Everyone should get a standing ovation when they come out. It should be federal law. Obama should have stuck it in the hate crimes amendment.

"Congrats," Adam texts, forgetting that the talk show was taped in advance and Kris won't get the message during the commercial break. He follows it up quickly with, "You look hot in that shirt."

12.

In two days, Kris is going to sing on _So You Think You Can Dance_ so that's what he's thinking about when the press inundation begins. Does he regret this?

He doesn't answer his phone. Not even when he hears Adam's special ringtone. Especially not when he hears Katy's.

He finishes his late-night rehearsal session and gets in the SUV waiting outside. He tells the driver to go to Adam's place. Use side streets.

He regrets this. He'll regret it more and then it'll loop back around and he'll feel relieved. He's in shock and needs someone to hold him.

That person should be Katy, but that's not who he's driving toward.

13.

"Did you know about this? Did you tell him to do this? When did he tell you? How long have you known?" Katy isn't waiting for an answer. Katy knew about Kris, about boys, about boys and _him_ , has known almost as long as they've been together, called him on it in high school and he admitted it, said he would never act on it, said it was one thing to look and feel and fantasize but another to act on it. She believed that was still the deal and there he was on TV, saying how hard a decision it had been and how supportive everyone had been and how much he loved Katy and she wondered, if one part of the story is a lie, doesn't it all fall apart? She wasn't supportive and wouldn't have been, so does Kris really love her, know her?

"I think you're reading too much into this," Adam says. "I think he's been agonizing over this so much he just... forgot." That doesn't sound good at all.

"You always defend him. Even when he's - look. You can have him. You're the one he's in love with anyway."

Adam sucks in his breath. "So I guess none of us have the whole story."

"Did he really have to say it? Were you even paying attention? Of course you knew."

Adam has a question for her, but he doesn't ask it: what does it say about him that he had no idea?

14.

Kris's driver idles the SUV outside Adam's door. He's delivering Kris like a package. Kris's security meets Adam's security, nodding and whispering.

Kris sits in the back seat with his duffel bag over his shoulder. He keeps a change of clothes and an extra toothbrush packed since he never knows what time he'll finish or where he'll end up. This isn't some strange hotel room, though.

Kris doesn't cry. It's not real yet.

Adam stands on his front stoop in a bathrobe and no shoes, no makeup, hair in a thousand different directions like he planned it that way. He shouts, "Come in the house already."

There are no paparazzi. This is too secret. Kris runs inside. Now, he lets a sniffle and a tear out. It wasn't supposed to go like this.

Adam wraps him in a blanket and puts him to bed in the spare room. He makes Kris tea and hides Kris's phone. He says comforting things like, "I'm sure your management'll do damage control in the morning."

Kris waits for Adam to come into the spare bedroom like Prince Charming in platform boots and kiss his troubles away. But he'd never do that.

15.

While Kris is still asleep, Adam sends minions to the liquor store and Blockbuster. This is a normal friendship, and he is going to comfort Kris like a normal friend. He calls Kris's manager and says things have gone a little crazy, can she hold off the vultures and rehearsals until tomorrow?

Adam goes on the internet to see how bad the damage is. There's some nastiness in the gossip blogs, but what else is there on the gossip blogs? And on the fan boards, on Twitter and Facebook, the fans are over the moon. They're proud of him. 

Adam gets a text from Katy. She's getting on a plane for Little Rock tomorrow morning. After that, Kris can go home any time he wants.

16.

How to play Karaoke War:

  * Put an iPod on shuffle.
  * Whatever comes up, you have to sing.
  * If you get it at least kind of right, you get a point. If you don't know the song or completely eff it up, you don't get a point.
  * Either way, you drink.
  * Game ends when everyone is too drunk to sing anything right.



How to play Karaoke War the night after you come out on national television:

  * Let Adam let you win.
  * Let Adam get you drunk.
  * Let Adam kiss you.



That way, you can say he started it.

17.

Kris's management has ignored Adam, and it's fine, because Kris is fine. He's on the phone all morning giving interviews to the fanboy wing of the mass media: Slezak and Cantiello and AfterElton. They'll ask Kris softball questions and raise his self-esteem better than Adam could.

Adam is trying not to think about kissing. When's the last time he had a guy over and it stopped at kissing? Usually, this is the morning after sex, and he rides his postcoital buzz, fulfilled. But having only kissed, desire plugs up his mouth.

"Well," Kris says. "I guess I can go home now." He swings the fridge door open. He has no shoes on.

"Or you could have my cock for breakfast." During the show and on tour, Adam used to make these humor-veiled propositions all the time. First to shock Kris, and later, when Kris was unshockable, for anyone in earshot.

And now because he thinks it might actually happen.

18.

Kris comes over to the couch with a carton of orange juice. Sits in the V of Adam's wide-apart legs and drinks from the carton. Tilts his head back into Adam's chest. Feels the sweat prickle when Adam kisses his forehead.

Puts the juice down on the coffee table. Kneels in Adam's lap, facing him. Cups his hand between Adam's legs. Squeezes, not painfully. Adam makes a low, rough sound, like Kris has turned the key and now he is running.

A lot of Adam's life revolves around reminding everyone that he has a big dick and he knows what to do with it. He's never had to do much to keep that on Kris's mind. Alone with his hands down his shorts, Kris has imagined what he looks like hard, strutting, glitter-drenched. Has imagined Adam swelling in his fist, in his mouth, inside him, shocking him with pleasure. Adam's dick has made Kris a lot more secure in his sexuality.

19.

Kris with his hand on your cock, with his tongue in your mouth, with legs sprawling and chest leaning, with his long hairy arms and guitar fingers hooking your hair, losing his balance and cracking up. Catch him and dip him backward because you are only dancing.

May you put your hands on his hips. May you press your lips to his spiky hairline. Nobody gave you permission, but everyone implied.

Put your hands down his pants and he is so hard you almost come. He didn't say you could do that. You're out of the game.

20.

Adam is lying across him, heavy and thick as cream. Licking, sucking, brushing his lips softly to prickle Kris's skin and then sinking in his teeth. Kris has closed his eyes so he can't know where Adam's hands are. He is grabbing nothing. Adam slinks too fast to be held. He is performing.

"I'd ask you what you like," Adam says. "But I don't think you even know."

"I know what I like." He knows what he _would_ like. He pushes Adam's head down until it's between his legs. Adam unzips Kris with his teeth, and Kris laces his fingers around the back of Adam's neck to hold him there. Adam has a rock-and-roll tongue. He circles it, bobs his head, goes slow, pulls Kris to the edge but won't let him go over.

Kris is being performed. Performed upon. He's Adam's audience. His body applauds.

21.

Kris has a radio show jamboree, and Adam has to tape a segment for some talk show, and they are running late. They share a shower. Kris presses up against the tile like a gecko being frisked and lets Adam fuck him while the hot water pounds into their faces. Kris is moaning, into it, a natural bottom, begging for contradictory things, _Harder, slower, don't stop, hang on a second, no, harder._ Adam tries to keep up, tries so hard his orgasm takes him by surprise.

Kris's body looks different now that Adam's tasted it all. Adam's hands are too wet to knot the condom, his eyes too distracted. He misses the trash can because Kris is washing his hair.

Adam is so late he's willing to let whatever random makeup artist do his face. He wraps his wet hair in a bandanna. He looks butch or like someone's Jewish aunt, depending on the angle. 

In the car, his manager yells at him not to be a diva. "I'll be a diva if it means nobody knows where my dick has been."

His manager grabs his shoulders and tries to shake some sense into him. "I told you not to actually sleep with him. I _begged_ you."

22.

Kris sleeps in his own house (not home) in his own bed (new, and he didn't pick it out) alone (reaching for Katy, reaching for Adam). Her stuff is everywhere (still in boxes) and he thinks he can hear her (the pipes, the wind, traffic, birds, his own footsteps). He tries to go outside (paparazzi) tries to go for a drive (security) tries to go to Adam's (he has a schedule). He wants to take a sledgehammer to his walls but uses his toes instead and hurts himself.

His management hires him a lawyer. She looks like pure Los Angeles, all silicone and collagen and Botox, but she's from Chattanooga. She calls him _honey_ like she doesn't know his real name. She doesn't watch TV; she listens to country. She leaves lipstick on her coffee cups and tells Kris to cry it out. On the phone with Katy's lawyer, she is ruthless.

He doesn't announce his separation publicly. He lets arbitration happen around him like a car accident he refuses to slow down for. When anyone asks where Katy is, he says, "Back in Arkansas." But she's all over him.

23.

"We're not dating." I'm just sleeping at his house every night because he can't sleep alone.

"We're not dating." I just needed a plus one to the awards show.

"We're not dating." We were only holding hands when we walked out of the club at last call, my eyeliner smeared across my cheek, something sticky in his hair.

"We're not dating." He's married! Oh my God! We're just friends! Seriously. Come _on._

"We're not dating." His wrists tied to the bedpost with a leather strap while I eat his ass out.

"We're not dating." When I have a boyfriend, believe me, I'll let you know.

"It's been going on for a couple of months. We're just taking it slow, seeing how it goes."

24.

It feels like they don't see each other at all, coming and going. Weeks of touring in different cities, texting from hair and makeup two time zones apart. They fall asleep on the phone one night, too drowsy to remember to hang up. Kris's homesickness misses L.A. now, where he's left his heart. Who takes care of it when they're both on the road?

He avoids scandal with a shrug and a smile. People fall in love, and what can you do? He tried to keep his marriage together, but too much changed. He'll always love Katy.

He's not a good liar, and fame means playing a role. He became too much the person on TV. Katy doesn't love that person; Adam does.

He's on the verge of medical exhaustion, and his manager gets him three days off. A staycation, she calls it, and he wrinkles his nose because that's marketing. He lies out on the balcony on his squeaky white patio furniture in his sunglasses and reads an entire book. He brings his guitar out and finds a few chords that go together, puts together a few Swiss-cheese lyrics.

Adam drops by at dusk with a bouquet of wildflowers in his hand and a whip dangling from his belt. "Your people called my people," he says. They go up to the balcony, where the sun is setting like this display is its last chance to make it big. They kiss in the fading light, ignoring the camera flashes.


End file.
